Long ago, Raja Chulan decided he wanted to see what lay beneath the ocean. He had grown up hearing stories about Dika, a magical kingdom under the sea where merfolk was said to live for hundreds of years.

He asked his most skilled craftsmen to build him something no one had ever built before: a giant bubble made of glass, strong enough to keep the sea out. 

When the bubble was ready, Raja Chulan's men attached it to a long chain and carried it onto a ship. Slowly, they lowered the raja into the water inside his glass bubble, while everyone on board prayed for his safe return.

Down and down the bubble sank. Raja Chulan pressed his hands to the glass, amazed by the coral in every colour and the fish unlike any he had seen before. Then something enormous swam past, so close that he flinched, certain that a monster had found him.

But when the creature circled back, Raja Chulan saw it wasn't a monster at all. It was a mermaid, with long flowing hair and a shimmering tail. She was singing a song so strange and beautiful that without stopping to think, Raja Chulan opened his glass bubble to hear her better. 

Water rushed in at once. Raja Chulan realised he couldn't breathe or swim underwater and began to sink. Just as he did, the mermaid’s voice reached him, not through her lips, but directly in his mind. “Breathe,” she told him. In an instant, he found he could breathe underwater, just like her.

She took his hand. "Come with me. I'll bring you to my kingdom,” her voice continued.

She led him to Dika, a city built from coral and seashells, where fish as large as horses were kept and reared like farm animals. At the entrance to a grand coral cave stood a merman with a long white beard and a glittering gold crown.

"Welcome to Dika," he said, his words arriving in Raja Chulan’s mind the same way the mermaid’s had. "I am Raja Aftabu'l-Ardl, and the mermaid who has brought you here is my beautiful daughter, Mathabu’l-Bahri.”

Over a feast of enormous fish and glittering shellfish, Raja Chulan and Mathabu’l-Bahri talked and laughed together long into the evening. She had saved his life and shown him nothing but kindness since, and by the time the feast ended, he knew he had fallen in love with her.

The sea king gave his blessing. He then proposed to the sea princess. After giving it careful thought, Mathabu’l-Bahri agreed to marry him. The sea kingdom celebrated their princess and her new husband, welcoming Raja Chulan as one of their own.

Several years pass and Raja Chulan had built his new life in the sea. His wife had given birth to three chubby sons. However, he still thought of his old kingdom often, and of the people who were still waiting for a king who had never returned. His wife, who could read his heart, finally spoke first.

"If you wish to return home, I won't stop you," she told him. "But you should know that once you leave Dika, you can never come back to me."

Raja Chulan pondered his decision for days. He loved his family in Dika, but he had a kingdom on land that had gone too long without its king. In the end, he chose to return. His wife wept, but she gave him her blessing and bade him farewell. Before he left, he asked her father to consider sending their three sons to land when they were older, so that one day they could rule kingdoms of their own.

A winged horse carried him up from the sea and set him down on the shores of his kingdom. His city glittered in the distance, exactly as he remembered it. He had finally explored every corner of the world he had set out to see. A part of his heart would always remain in Dika, but he was finally home.